Sunday, June 05, 2011

je ne veux pais travailler

Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Je ne sais pas (while I actually wanted to convey 'je ne veux pais travailler'), Le minimum... these fill the air dense with the smoke on this evening as I study the kinetic theory of gases, right out in front of the hotel room, with a Frenchman, and a young Japanese who either is multilingual, or is speaking as garbled an English that it sounds like French. Another Jap - an older lady who seems in relation to Mr. Miyagi guy from the Karate Kid movies - sits in the verandah by herself as she lays engrossed in a book, and occasionally notices and greets passerbys, one of whom was that Jap I am with, another a Sadhu-Baba in saffron, and one primitive-man-Bob-Marley hybrid with long crazy locks and a तानपुरा (Tambura) in hand.

The pulse of the moment shifts from Indian v French crowds (how the concept of 'Carnivale' in France is the same as any general street scene in India), to that of everybody wanting more/better of the same things in life which is like an endless suffering (raising their Minimum), to a Lou Reed concert the French guy once went to, to a great load of undecipherable babble in the Frenchman's state of alternate consciousness. Oh, the Frenchman also went about how he grabbed and massaged a NewZealander girl's crotch when, while sharing a smoke, a cig amber fell on her pyjamas without her notice. His narration of the incident made his eyebrows peak, and his cheeks pull wider apart, which I believe is called glee.

This Frenchman had no lofty travel plans, and had been here for 30 days, waiting to leave (by AI) on Jun 29. He was here, completely off the civilizational map, thinned out under the effect of red bulbs and white smoke. One amongst those who find life a cacophony, and would like to retire in basic comforts, free of our worldly worries, happy.
Or how the the tagline for the tobacco bag on sale along Dragon lane put it: "People who smoke die younger"

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